Am Donnerstag, 09.12.04 um 04:01 Uhr schrieb Erinn Clark:
I would say "feminist" is certainly a somewhat controversial term in
the
US. Many people that actually identify with basic feminist ideology
hesitate to identify themselves as feminists because of a few extreme
cases. The term doesn't bother me, though.
Feminism is quite a bit different from forcing equality for all people,
So I would not call me a feminist at all as real feminists would not
call me either.
There are some strange among some feminists, but that real is a
minority.
Our all objection is having real equality and that is common sense
between me and others and most of the women - and even men -
participating women's movement.
Beside that: making women more visible in Debian Project will attract
more women and, maybe, in some years there will be not that many
discussion why women have to be made visible, too, any longer.
Related to the discussion on newsforge I have a question to the
audience: When I was young, I learned that english manuals use "you"
(second person) instead of third person and something like "man" in
German language. Now it seems that this is mostly reversed to using
"he" instead of "you" and talking to directly to the user in a manual.
Is that US specific? Why did that change? Couldn't we try to reverse
the change? It is not only that using "you" is gender neutral, I think
it is more user friendly at all talking to the reader directly in a
manual.
"if you type 'ls' on the prompt you will get a list of all files in the
current directory" sounds even more friendly as "If one types 'ls' on
the prompt, there will be shown a list of all files in the current
directory" or "If the user types 'ls' on the prompt, he/she will get a
list of all files in the current directory". I think this simple
example shows that the discussion about gender neutral manuals is not
only women related. Insisting writing "he" seems to be a principle
using gender biased wording even if it is not friendly to _any_ user.
And that is sexism pure: Forcing usage of male gender, even if that
ignores male's interests.
greetings
Jutta
--
http://www.witch.westfalen.de
http://witch.muensterland.org
